Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-07-02
WESTERN AMERICANS.
Mon who D. et0p, spread and
l3rOw Be1 I'd the Prairies.

MON who D. eiop, spread and
Grow Bel I'd the Prairies.
The American only develops himself
and grows for all he is worth in the
great West. He is more free and timber
there and unfolds those generous pecu.
liarities and largenesses of humanity
which never blossomed before. The
"environment" has much to do with it.
The great spaces over which he roams
contribute the enlargement of his mental
horizon. There have been races before
who roamed the illimitable desert, but
travelled on foot or on camel back, and
were limited in their range. There was
nothing continental about them, as there
In about our railroad desert travellers,
who swing along through thousands of
miles Of sand and sagebrush with
growing contempt for time and space.
But expansive and great as these people
have become under the new conditions,
the Drawer has q fancy that the devel.
opment of the race has oply just begun,
and that the future will show us in per.
fection kind Of man new to the
world. Out somewhere on the Santa
Fe route, where the desert of one day
was like the desert Of the day before,
and the Pullman car rolls and awnings
over the wide waste beneath the blue
sky day after day under its bleak flag OF
smoke, 10 the early gray of morning,
when the men were waiting their turns
ct the abiution bowls,
AsTRIP OF BOY,
Perhaps aged 7, stood balancing himself
on his little legs, clad in knickerbockers,
biding bis time, with all the nonchalence
of IN old campaigner.
"How did you sleep, CAPT" asked a
we'll meaning elderly gentleman.
"Well. thank you," was the dignified
responss; ''ss I always do on sleeping
car"
Always doess Great horrors! Hardly
out Of his swaddling clothes. and yet he
always sleeps we'll in sleeper! Was
he born on q sleeper-was he cradled
in Pullman! He has always been in
motion, probably; he was started at thir.
ty miles an hour, no doubt, this mar.
velous boy of our new era. He was not
born in house at rest, but the locomo-
tive snatched him along with q shrek
and q roar before his eyes were fairly
open, and he was rocked in a ''sec.
tion," aad his first sensation of life was
that of moving rapidly over vast arid
spaces, through cattle ranges and along
cafions. The effect of quick and easy
locomotion on character may have been
noted before, but it seems that here is
the production of new sort of man,
the direct product of our railway era.
It is not simply that this boy is ma.
ture, but that he must be q different
and nohler sort of boy than one born,
say, ct home or on canal boat; for
whether he was born on the rail or not
he belongs to the railway system of CIV
ilisation. Before he gets into his trous.
ers he il old in experience, and he has
discounted many Of the novelties that
usually break gradually on the pilgrim.
age OF this world. He belongs to
THE NEW EXPANSIVE RACE,
That must live in motion, whose proper
home is the Pullman (which will proba.
bly, be improved in time into dustless,
sweet smelling, well aired bedroom), and
whose domestic life will be on the wing,
20 to speak. The Interstate Commerce
bill will pass him along without friction
from end to end of the Union, and per.
haps . uniform divorce law will enable
him to change his marital relations at any
place where he happens to dine.
The promising lad is only faint
intimation of what we are all com.
ing to when we fully acquire the free.
dom Of the continent and come into
that expansiveness of feeling and
of language that characterizes the great
West. Il is burst Of joyous exuber-
ance that comes from the sense of an
illitable horizon. In shows itself
in the tender words of local
Newspaper at Bowie, Arizona,
on the death of q beloved citizen:
"'Death loves shining mark, and
she hit dandy when she turned loose
ON Jim." And also in the closing words
Of New Mexico obituary, which the
Kansas Magazine quotes: Her tired
spirit was released from the pain racking
body and scared sloft to eternal glory at
4:3O, Denver time" We die, as it were,
in motion, - we sleep, and there is
nowhere any boundary to our
expansion. Perhaps we shall
never again know any rest as
we now understand the term-rest being
only change Of motion-and we shall
not be able to sleep except on the cars,
and whether we die by Denver time or
by the nineteenth meridian, we shall
only change our time. Blessed be this
slip of . boy who is man before he is
IN infant and teaches US what rapid
transit can do for our race? The only
thing that can possibly hinder us in our
progress will be second childhood; we
have abolished the tirst.-[ Harper's
Magazine.